Imagine you are in your twenties, you live in a rich country, you are healthy, you are reasonably intelligent, you have had an education, actually, you have everything half the world longs for, yet you have a problem too. The problem is this: you have so many possibilities, so many options, so much choice, you just can't decide what to do. You just can't decide, so you end up not making any decisions at all. Life just happens to you, girlfriends or boyfriends come and go, jobs just come on your way, not because you really wanted them, but you just took what came along. I suppose many of us in the "western world" can relate to that situation to some extent.

So just suppose there were a drug curing this state of indecision. A drug that would help you to know what you want and go for it. That is the central idea of this book, and as such an interesting and fascinating one. What would happen?
Dwight Wilmerding is the lucky chap who can try this medicine in Benjamin Kunkel's novel that was much hyped when it was published in 2005. A thought provoking theme, a hype, you will understand, my expectations were high.

However, I feel incredibly disappointed! I still can't decide whether this book was supposed to be funny, in a sarcastic way, and wasn't, or if it was supposed to be deep - and wasn't. I may hope that the intention was to be funny about this stereotypical spoiled American in his twenties, and that I just didn't get the humour, because it is too full of references that a non-American wouldn't understand. I just don't hope that this was intended to be serious, because it is so full of complete superficial wannabe deepness, that I just couldn't believe someone would seriously write that, AND be able to find a publisher. No, it must have been intended as a farce...

Apart from that, the story is, well, not very interesting either. We're introduced to Dwights indecisive life in New York, he starts to take the medicine, and things start to happen. He loses his job, he travels to Ecuador, he meets a girl. However, most of what happens is not caused by decisiveness at all. It is still just happening. And he is happy about it. I suppose that's the big message, that you should accept that this is life, full of doubt. Wow. I feel so enlightened now..... ( )

Ultimate slacker dude gets access to a drug to help him overcome his flakey indecisiveness. Not life changing but enjoyable. ( )

Good start, but halfway through the story became less and less compelling. The drugstories are great but the morale at the end of the book is terrible .. and it feels like a cheap detective plot has been unraveled. I got less and less sympathy for the main character. ( )

Got a third of the way through, and stopped. Not sure if it was because of the read, or because I was busy around that time. I've got it on my list of "to get back too's."

started off pretty funny, became a great travel story, then turned into a weird drug story, and ended in a political "moral of the story" which was apparently the whole point of the book. ( )